JODIE CEARNS, Brisbane

November 11 2002By Wayne Miller

Jodie Cearns.

Everyone who knew Jodie Cearns talks of how she lived as if each day were her last. Her sister, Blair, says she never had a bad word for anyone.

She had been an all-rounder at school. She excelled at sport, especially swimming, track and field, and netball. A year younger than her classmates, she was dux of her class in year 7 at Monivae College in Hamilton, in Victoria's west.

At 26, Jodie contracted and recovered from uterine cancer. She moved to Brisbane in 1992 and became a hair product sales representative. She loved the job - the travel, the people she met.

"Her joyfulness, her passion for life, made her a real success," close friend Angie Scott says.

This trip was her 13th to Bali. As usual, she took her nail polish, makeup, bobby pins and an array of hair products. She gave them to her Balinese friends, sat with them and helped make them up. She would paint their nails and they would paint hers.

Jodie, 35, often travelled in a party of eight friends. They stayed in a Bali villa with its own chef and staff. Jodie would organise a night off for the staff and, in a gesture of friendship, she and her friends would cook and wait on them.

Five weeks before the bombing, Jodie became an aunt for the third time. She was ecstatic.